After Helen had shown me all the strange, beautiful places of the beach, I helped her up the precipitous bank, where steps had been carefully cut in the rock or laid upon the crumbling sods. She took me to the stables, and I saw the horses, her pony and the blooded colt in training for her: her dogs had followed us about, leaping and fawning upon her and smelling suspiciously at me. Mr. Raymond disliked animals, and it was to the stables or the gardener's cottage that the child came to pet her hounds, her sheep-dog and her snowy Pomeranian: not even Beppo, the Italian greyhound, was domesticated at the house. Some shy deer peered out at us from their paddock, and a doe, less timid than the rest, approached us and gave me a good look out of her meek, beautiful eyes. Gold and silver pheasants lurked in the shrubberies, and peacocks spread their tails and paraded before us on the greensward. Everything seemed to be Helen's, and not a flower that bloomed or a bird that flew but she gave it an ample tenderness.
We did not talk much, but stood together hand in hand, I gazing with ardent delight and curiosity at all these beautiful expressions of life which filled the place.
"Do you like it?" she inquired anxiously from time to time, and when I answered her gravely that I liked it, she would smile a contented little smile. She asked me if I rode, and carefully selected the horse she considered suitable for me, and gave the groom orders about exercising him regularly. The man took her instructions with a respectful air: she was evidently mistress of the place, and the centurion in the Gospel had not his servants better under his command than had she. It was a quaint sight to see the child knitting her brows over some complaint of Robinson's against McGill the gardener: she settled it promptly with but half a dozen words. She had energy enough and to spare for her duties, but she had nothing of that eager bubbling up of light thoughts and bright hopes which other children know and use in endless chatter and playful gambollings, like puppies and kittens and other happy young things. There was always shrewd purpose behind her few words, and she seemed always on her guard, always ready to act promptly and with decision.